Manager to Director: It Isn’t Just a Title
By Kristen Hayer
I had just become a Director of Sales and Marketing in the company I had been with for a few years. In my mind, this was the next natural step in my progression toward an executive role, and I saw it as a great title bump with a corresponding pay raise. I didn’t realize that the role would be as challenging as it ended up, and in hindsight that was because I didn’t understand the differences between being a manager and being a director. Thankfully, I learn fast. That said, it would have been helpful to have more clarity around what I was getting into, and what would make me a success in the role.
Manager and Director titles get thrown around a lot in sales, customer success and other customer-facing roles. Sometimes this is because customers tend to respect people with a leadership title more than those without one. It can be a strategic choice for a company to call their CSMs “CS Director” instead so that they can uplevel their conversations. Sometimes people end up with titles like lead, head of, manager or director so that the company can retain them. In these cases, the level of expectation around the role often doesn’t really match the title. However, when a person is promoted from a true, people manager position to a director position, there are important differences in the responsibilities, scope and expectations.
What is a Manager
There are managers of tasks and projects, and there are managers of people. For the rest of this article, when I say manager, I mean people manager. So, what is a manager? Managers are tasked with leading a functional group of employees to successfully achieve the goals of their team. From a practical standpoint, this means managing team members, analyzing performance, reporting on results, hiring new people when needed, and getting new team members up to speed. Managers focus their attention on their team.
What is a Director
A director is a people manager who not only leads multiple functional groups, but also manages the leaders of those teams. It is an exponential leap from being a people manager. Directors also keep their groups aligned with other functional teams in the company: Sales, Product, Leadership, Finance, HR. Directors focus their attention on their department and its performance within the organization. They often have a broader set of company metrics they are accountable for as well.
Skills You Need as a Director
Strategic Planning – As a director, you’ll be setting goals for your department at both the company and team levels. You need to know how to analyze data to set challenging, but achievable goals, how to effectively communicate those objectives to your team, and how to determine the tools and resources you’ll need to execute on your plans.
Developing & Leading Managers – Choosing strong leaders to manage the team members on your various groups is critical to the success of your department. Knowing when to hire a new manager, what to look for in a leader, and how to effectively motivate a manager are all critical director-level skills.
Financial Reporting & Budgeting – Knowing how your metrics tie into the company’s key metrics is important in helping you understand how to set meaningful goals. In addition, you need to know how to build a model to project your staffing needs, and how to structure a CS organization as you grow over time. Projecting the people and tools that will be needed over time is an annual project for a director.
Collaborating with Other Executives – Moving into a director role means a more significant cross-functional role in the company. Influencing peers and collaborating effectively enable you to accomplish more as a leader. Directors are expected to drive company-wide initiatives and lead major change efforts.
As you grow your leadership career, I hope you’ll carefully consider the move from manager to director. I wish I had known more about the responsibility I took on, and the expectations that were a part of that role. Getting some experience in these four areas before you are a director will help ensure that you’re ready for that next, important, step.
The Success League is a Customer Success consulting firm that offers CS leadership certification training, including a series on Leading as a Director. Please visit TheSuccessLeague.io for more on these and our other offerings.
Kristen Hayer - Kristen founded The Success League in 2015 and currently serves as the company's CEO. Over the past 25 years Kristen has been a success, sales, and marketing executive, primarily working with scaling tech companies, and leading several award-winning customer success teams. She has written over 100 articles on customer success, and is the host of 3 podcasts about the field. Kristen has served as a judge for the Customer Success Excellence awards, and is on the board of several early-stage tech companies. She received her MBA from the University of Washington in Seattle, and now lives in San Francisco.
